My blog - July 2006
Wedding: ETA 96 hours
July 25th 2006, 5:34pm
With just four days to go until our wedding things are slightly hectic. The person making our cake isn't any more - she sent us an email ages ago but it didn't get through, so we didn't find out until last week. So as well as making seating plans, picking up relatives from the airport (my parents and Liz and Becky flew in yesterday), checking who actually is coming, shopping for artificial flowers (we'll have real ones too), picking up some logs from a farm to make aisle markers from (whatever they are), working out our vows, meeting up with the photographer (she just called), deciding whether to drive or fly to our honeymoon (two days of driving, with the convenience of having a car all week, or two hours flying but having to use public transport all week?), and one or two other things, we're also having to try to find someone who'll make a cake in a week.
But at least we now have somewhere to live after we get back from the honeymoon. I found a website (www.sublet.com) where there were a couple of girls looking for someone to rent their apartment while they're on holiday in Peru for the two months we need somewhere to live. It's in a really nice part of downtown, it includes high speed internet (which I need for work), is decorated really nicely and the rent is good. The day before I'd prayed we'd find somewhere to live the next day, and it was the first place I found and is perfect for us, so that was a great answer to prayer.
The picture, by the way, was taken when I was driving over to the farm to pick up the logs, and the sky looked really cool. We occasionally get thunderstorms and heavy showers, but they don't usually last for more than an hour or so and then the rest of the day is really hot. Although that does encourage the mosquitoes. I got bitten forty times in ten minutes a few weeks ago, so now I cover myself in DEET before I leave the house, and have only been bitten twice since.
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I need Cars. Lots of Cars.
July 20th 2006, 6:29am
This evening Naomi and I went to the A&W on Macleod Trail SW because we'd heard that people with cool old cars turn up there on Wednesday nights. And we'd heard right. When we first got there there were ten or so cars, but eventually there must have been over a hundred - maybe a hundred and fifty. Lots of Mustangs and Camaros, quite a few Chevy Bel Airs, and loads of others too.
There were even some British cars there, with quite a decent handful of MGs. (The MGs looked dwarfed by the Bel Air, but the picture doesn't work to show that because of the MGs being closer to the camera.) And a row of four VW Golfs, including ours. We'd parked somewhere else, but then when we saw a row of three Golfs there we drove ours over to join them.
We'd hoped to find a car there to use for the wedding. We got one Camaro owner to at least take our number, but everyone else was already doing things that weekend. Mostly going to other car shows.
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Calgary Stampede
July 17th 2006, 11:04pm
As promised, here are some photographs from the Stampede.
Saddle Bronc
You probably already know about this event - it's where the rider tries to stay on the horse for eight seconds, while the horse bucks and tries to get him off. They then get marks, although I don't know how the marking scheme works. (The picture might be bareback bronc actually).
Steer Wrestling
In this event a steer is released from a stall, and then a mounted cowboy rides after it, leaps off his horse onto the steer and wrestles it to the ground. The good ones do it in about three and a half seconds.
Bull Riding
This event is like bronc, but you have to be crazier, since you ride a mad bull instead of a crazy horse. One guy who came off got butted into the fence, but got up and walked away. (Well, ran actually). In the bareback bronc a guy came off and was knocked unconscious, but they managed to revive him and he walked away rather unsteadily.
Other events we saw were calf roping, where a calf is released, a cowboy rides after it, lassoes it, jumps off his horse and ties the calf's legs together - in about seven or eight seconds. And barrel racing - where they ride a horse around three barrels which are spaced out in the arena, as fast as possible. In the final then the two fastest tied at exactly 17.43 seconds (or thereabouts), so they had to have another race to find the winner. The runner up was sixty-three years old.
Before we watched the rodeo we watched a bit of the working cow horse competition. Unfortunately a cow horse isn't a bizarre half cow, half horse creature, but a horse which rounds up cows. Like a sheep dog. And a monster dog isn't scary at all, it's just a big hot dog. Anyway, we watched a bit of the competition, and the picture is of that.
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Yahoo!
July 17th 2006, 5:33am
I've just got back from the Calgary Stampede. A big western even that Calgary has each year, where they have rodeo and chuck-wagon racing and fairground rides and all that jazz. It's a lot of fun, especially if you like taking photographs. Which, as you probably know, Naomi and I do. During the day we took four hundred and twenty-seven photos, which means one evening soon I'm going to have to sort through them and find the good ones to post on here, because I'm too tired right now, so I'm off to bed. But in the meantime, here's one picture of someone being bucked off a horse in the rodeo.
And while I'm about it, I'll post this picture of the neighbour's car which I took yesterday.
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Comment posted by Maret at 5:33am on July 17th 2006
so it`s not you being thrown off the horse?
Comment posted by James Ots at 5:33am on July 17th 2006
disappointed?
Comment posted by Maret at 5:33am on July 17th 2006
no,quite the opposite.Don`t want you to be injured before your wedding!
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Where I'm Staying
July 14th 2006, 10:24pm
This is the house I'm staying in at the moment. Its owners are away so I'm housesitting until just before the wedding when they get back. This isn't a very interesting blog entry, is it?
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Photo-free Update
July 13th 2006, 6:47am
Unfortunately I have no new photos to show here. I've been out several times and wanted to take photos, but I haven't been carrying around my camera phone - since it doesn't work on the networks here. (It works fine on Orange - but on Rogers it refuses to send text messages, because of the rather weird way in which their computer system works.)
Last week I went to Naomi's work barbeque out at the Wild Wild West Event Centre. It was an event for people from all the local branches of the bank she works at, so there were a lot of people there - a large number of whom were dressed in western clothes. And there were some actors there - although I use the term 'actor' loosely - who were acting out a small town wedding, and they had very bad accents and I didn't really pay attention to their acting, since it was going on all the time as if it was part of the event.
There was a rodeo bull thing there (a mechanical bull which bucks and rotates and tries to throw you off), but I didn't have a go. If I'd had my camera phone I'd have a photo, but alas, I didn't. I did have a tug of war with Naomi and just about beat her, although I came across a fence before I'd really beaten her and had to stop because I didn't think I could climb across it while still holding the rope.
Wedding planning is going well. We've planned a fair bit of it so far, but there's still a million and one things left to do. Maybe even a million and two. And today I discovered that it's going to take even longer than I thought to get Naomi's settlement visa, so I won't be back in England at the start of September. Hopefully by the end of that month though. I'm not sure what we're going to do in the meantime, since we don't have anywhere to live over here.
Oh, and in case you weren't aware - the wedding is on July 29th. And our wedding website is at http://www.aroundtheworld2tietheknot.com.
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Comment posted by David Mwambari at 5:34pm on July 25th 2006
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR WEDDING>....Greetings ot Naomi and hope to meet her soon...
d.
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